Megyn Kelly is razor sharp, impeccably prepared, relentless, tough, verbally skilled, and, to boot, a pretty good looker. She’s also an egomaniacal smart-aleck who seems intent on following Glenn Beck down the path to mediocre celebrity status.

When Kelly is on her game and acts like a broadcast professional, there’s no one better. She’s at her best when she’s going after radical–left liars like Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby, Planned Parenthood’s criminal elite, and just about everyone who perpetuated the “Hands up, don’t shoot” lie.

But she’s at her absolute worst when her cranial inflammatory condition — Beckitis — flares up and “I,” “me,” “my” come rolling off her tongue in nonstop fashion. Well … come to think of it … she’s at her very worst when she’s interviewing her “hunk” of a house-husband and artificially boosting one of his novels into a New York Times bestseller. I think George and Ira Gershwin had him in mind when they wrote “Nice work if you can get it.”

Borrowing from her ex-husband’s comments about his marriage to Kelly, her current spouse appears to be the wife she’s always wanted. As her ex (Dr. Dan Kendall) put it, “We both needed someone to cook and clean.”

But let’s not get personal here. I have no dog in this fight — I’ve never even met Donald Trump — but starting what is supposed to be a serious debate about serious issues by asking a flagrantly loaded question aimed at one participant — under the dishonest guise of its being for all the participants — is a perfect example of why people dislike the media almost as much as they do politicians.

But for me, Kelly’s loaded question was almost secondary. I was already annoyed by her giddy, self-absorbed blather long before the candidates came out of their bunkers to do battle.

I felt like I wanted one of her colleagues to grab her by the arm and tell her to calm down and act like she’s been in the end zone before. When she showed a video of what she was doing just before the debate (It sounded like a bunch of childish gibberish, so I didn’t really even understand what she was talking about.), it was clear that she was going to seize her moment in the spotlight to focus on her main love: Megyn Kelly.

It reminded me of her appearance on Jimmy Kimmel’s show some time ago when she made a complete ass of herself — giddy off the charts — talking about her experiences at the White House Christmas party and how awkward she felt meeting the Obamas. (No, I don’t watch Jimmy Kimmel, but — as you would guess — she actually played the video on her show. It’s fortunate for her ego that the universe is expanding.)

But back to the debate. After Trump told her, “You’re not doing a very good job,” Kelly looked like an embarrassed little girl who had been slapped on the wrist, immediately frowned and looked down, and remained stone silent for a few glorious moments. With all her smarts, I found myself wondering why she would think she could get away with taking a swipe at the toughest street fighter on the planet.

In any event, whatever else one might think of Donald Trump, he was right on when he told Kelly that she wasn’t doing a very good job — because she wasn’t. As to the blood comments, that whole brouhaha is so stupid that it’s not worth discussing.

Now, let me answer my own question as to why Kelly thought she could get away with taking a swipe at Donald Trump: It’s because she has the ultimate Teflon shield around her — Brit Hume and his wife, Bill O’Reilly, and, most important of all, Roger Ailes. Ailes quickly went on the record by saying that Kelly “is a brilliant journalist and I support her 100 percent.”

Big mistake, Roger. It’s like rewarding a spoiled, pampered child. So it was no surprise when Kelly began her Monday broadcast by saying, “You may have heard there was a dustup involving yours truly and presidential contender Donald Trump.”

She then self-righteously said that she had decided not to respond to Trump’s remarks (even though she was responding to them as she spoke!), adding that he has declined to apologize and “I certainly will not apologize for doing good journalism.” Talk about a self-serving comment — her journalism was terrible!

It was analogous to Lois Lerner’s proclaiming to Congress that she had done nothing wrong, then taking the Fifth Amendment. It’s a cute trick, and both she and Kelly got away with it.

Plain and simple, Kelly’s problem is that she violates — with impunity — a cardinal rule of television broadcasting: Never make yourself part of the story — and certainly not the story. From the time she showed those pre-debate clips about herself until The Donald smacked her down, it felt like she was screaming at viewers, “Look at me! Look at me! Aren’t I great?” She may be pretty, but she’s pretty nauseating as well.

While the powers that be at Fox can coddle and protect Kelly from losing her job, they can’t force the public to continue to watch her. I’ve been around long enough to know that the one ironclad rule of life is that things change, so the Queen of Narcissism would do well to look over her shoulder.

As always, Fox has a bevy of talented beauties in the pipeline. It’s kind of like Ohio State football, where if your Heisman Trophy candidate quarterback goes down, you just pull another one off the bench who’s just as good or better.

It really is true that every twenty-four hours the world turns over and somebody else is on top. It’s surprising that her mentor, Brit Hume, who became a legend by playing things straight down the journalistic middle (never injecting himself into the story), would not take the time to explain the rules to her.

With all this in mind, my conclusion is that the big winner is Kelly’s ex, Dr. Dan Kendall. Every time she goes on another self-worshiping rant, you’ve got to believe he’s thinking, “But for the grace of God …”